Bats, eagles, muscles, and bones

The team began with an HBO-approved version of Drogon from a partner VFX company, and the look development department used this as a basis to add the organic details needed to create a realistic, relatable dragon.

Schelesny says the team looked at the way bats and eagles fly, and observed wind moving through the sails of ships to help them design Drogon’s wing membranes.

What if a dragon really flew past you?

Once the shoot has happened, animators have to fly the CG character of Drogon through the filmed background and ensure the dragon is always a little bit ahead of the camera.

“You have to imagine, what would happen if a dragon was really doing this there?” said Schelesny. “The dragon would fly past and the camera operator would say, ‘Oh he’s flying left, I’d better follow him…’ We have to reverse engineer that.”

Lighting artists then match the lighting of Drogon with the light on set, and finally compositors integrate everything together.

“That’s when we will do the final adjustments of the dragon to fit into that background, add atmosphere, add haze, some smoke, some cloud effects,” said Schelesny.

Schelesny explains that is real fire, those are real stunt men, and if the HBO producers can film something in real-life, they will.

“There are many occasions in the loot train sequence where you will see 30, 40, 50 people catching on fire,” said Schelesny. “In almost all those cases, it’s always people actually on fire. They just light a whole bunch of stuntmen on fire. All at once. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

‘It is incredibly pressure-packed’

Weiss, who liaised with HBO’s producer on the budget and schedule for the shots, said the biggest challenge of the sequence was the tight timing of the pre-visualization phase.

“They have to nail that, because they’ve booked these actors on a motion control rig for that timeframe,” said Weiss. “If our shots aren’t up to par and they’re not working well then we’ve got a problem – but it’s a serious financial problem on their side as well.”

Schelesny says this means there’s much less time for planning and “you have to rely on the artist’s first instincts being correct.”

“It is incredibly pressure-packed, and some people can view it as a wonderful experience, or incredibly difficult,” said Schelesny. “For me it’s a real challenge, as an artist and as a supervisor, possibly one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done in the industry.”

‘We all went through this battle together’

Overall, Schelesny, Weiss, and their team which peaked at 65 artists, completed 95 shots for Game of Thrones in season 7.

Weiss said this is the tightest run project he’s ever worked on, but he’s incredibly happy with how it went.

“It’s pretty hard not to be proud of the entire thing. I’m proud that we did it,” Weiss said.